Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

"The EvolutIon Has Still Not Arrived..."

First of all I am not anti pro evo. I have been playing iss games for years and years and have always found them alot more involving than the likes of Fifa. That said I believe that this installment has been the worst to date. Hopefully through this quickish review I will be able to explain why I think this.

Graphics: 6/10 (dragged down horribly by the replays)

The players now bare a uncanny resemblance to their counterparts which is all very good but to be honest it makes no difference when you can barely make out any of their features from the standard camera view. It is nice for the replays though when you see James McFadden's delighted face as he raps one round Gallas in the back of the French net. This brings me nicely onto my next point - replays. Konami where did it all go wrong? The replays jutter unbelievably and makes everything a complete blur, rendering the graphics useless, as do cutscenes. It makes you wonder if the Konami team actually tested the cutscenes or replays! Saying that I have encountered no problems like this during actual gameplay, thankfully.



Sound: 8/10

A big step up in sound in my opinion. The new commentators seem to have a better understanding of whats going on and their commentary flows alot better than in previous games. Also this time round you can hear screams from the players as they are hacked to the ground. Although it doesnt add much it is a nice small touch. A bit more crowd noise wouldnt have gone a miss either, the quietness of the crowd does not do anything for the atmosphere!



Gameplay: 6/10

The big one. How does it play? Well being honest... much the same as the last one(which is much the same as the one before that). Although filled with nice little touches, and a quicker ball mechanism, there does not seem to be much change to keep the player interested in it. The new tricks such as the nutmeg and the dive are very nice to see appear, and importantly dont interfere too much with play. Another nice touch is the quick freekicks(which actually work this time around), which keeps the ball alive as you construct an attack. The ball mechanism also seems alot heavier than before, allowing shots to fly low and therefore allow more efforts at goal. This adds a bit more realism to the gameplay.

My major downer on the gameplay is that it seems to script the game on lots of occasions. For example the ball will just bounce off your players alot and it doesnt matter what you press, your player wont control the ball. Inevitably this ends with the opposition scoring, then by magic your team go back to being able to control the ball. This really drags the game down in my opinion and makes it pretty frustrating to play.

Something I have yet to mention is the master league. Basically this is because its not much different. The basic definition I have came to about the master league is : "master league of pes6... with bells on". As in just a pretty version of what we already had. Another thing is the online play but I will not go into this (due to broadband issues) but of what ive heard it is very laggy. This is to be expected at the moment though as the servers are brought up. If this is still the case by 08 then there could be serious cause for complaint.



Overall:

Although with all complaints this is not a bad game. It is a very good game, that we had last year(for good points of this game just look at a review for pro evo 6!). There have been next to no MAJOR changes to the game, obviously Seabass and co thought its the little things that count. The game also feels incomplete and this leaves the player feeling a bit cheated. For the money and Konami's time to work on PES, I personally expected more than a bugged up replayed, scripted oppositioned and slightly faster shambles of a Pro Ev 6.5 . This year only just scraped being worth buying... lets just say if next years effort isnt much better then I may consider making an Henry-like sprint passed it.


Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/07

Game Release: Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (EU, 10/26/07)